A Month in the making: My current WIP

I don’t really have the words for the kind of progress and changes I have made in my life recently. For so long, everything the world threw at me was a block. All I could think was it is useless so why even try. Or even when I try something happens, things don’t work out and I go backwards more often then I move forward.

My mental health was terrible. My heart was in a state of torment and every little thing became a dead forest growing in my mind. I could not give myself to my words because my mind was not ok. I wasn’t happy. Even now my mental health is rocky at times, but the point here is that instead of letting my thoughts win over I am giving myself to action.

I started writing my first draft of my current fantasy WIP on May 31st of this year with 6,000 words having already been written. (I had tried creating a different first draft, but I changed a whole bunch of stuff and rebooted it). Today on July 8th, 2018 about a month and a week later i have 20,000 words and a hold on my story that I never thought I would have.

For the first time in my life I sit and think to myself “yeah I think I can do this”. On May 31st I gave myself 3 months to write my first draft and in the first month I wrote more then I ever had and even though I feel a little behind (especially because I had very sucky days during that time where I didn’t write at all) I also feel like what I want to achieve is possible.

The weird thing is that at 20,000 words I still feel like my story has just begun. I realized that 50k is probably not going to be anywhere really close to the amount of words this novel will eventually have and that’s ok. I also learned that (at least for fantasy) I am an extreme underwriter with a lot of scenes needing more description and fleshing out to feel truly right.

I created a character who has gone through her life like I have and sees her mistakes as mental blocks and feels a bit empty, yet still tries and I made her personal to me. I came up with a new p.o.v with a character born with good intention, but goes bad after seeing far too many bad things and giving into it out of a different sort of good intention. I have a friend character who is funny, but sometimes goes a little bit to far, but only to lighten up hard situations. The characters in this book are so unique and different in my head and I love them all for different reasons.

I never thought I would write a book I wanted to read so badly. The fact that it came from the simple concept of having a soulmate book where the couple wasn’t actually awful to each other and had a healthy relationship is incredible to me. What stemmed from that is so much more then that. It’s magical, sad, hopeful, and at times… tragic (also has cool pets). It isn’t perfect. I don’t even think that it is good yet, but I can see what it could be.

I don’t know where the story will be a month from now. I don’t know how it will evolve. All I know is that the me that thought I could never write a fantasy novel is happy to realize that it was always possible. The me that couldn’t help writing contemporary scenes is happy that I decided that the first real try at a novel was for a fantasy. I’m not sure that if I wrote a contemporary first if I would have ever found the confidence to go for a fantasy, but now I feel like I could write for all the genres I love and that all those stories will be written.

I hope I never loose the excitement for stories that I feel right now. I love my characters. I love them and I let them live through terror and hurt, but I always.. always give them hope. The stories I love don’t stray from life’s ugly moments and my books won’t either. But in life there is beauty too and so I won’t forget to give happiness along the way.

I hope that as time moves forward that my writing only gets better. That I only tell stories that I would give 5 stars to. Right now, my fantasy is at a 3 star, but has 5 star potential. I am going to keep shining out my story till it is the best that it can be.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below.

35 thoughts on “A Month in the making: My current WIP”

I am so incredibly proud of everything you have accomplished and overcome so far! You are doing such an amazing job and I believe in you whole heartedly. If you ever need someone to edit or read over a draft or give you feedback or anything like that just let me know, I’d be happy to help out in any way that I can. You got this, keep trucking!!

That’s amazing for getting to 20,000 words! I’ve also tried to write a novel twice before; the first idea I had I actually got around 70,000 words written but I scrapped the entire thing. But I can totally relate to how amazing it feels to hit those word count goals 🙂 Here’s to the next 20k!

I think I would go insane if I scraped 70,000 words…. I don’t know if I got that far that I could do that unless I had too. I always save everything I write and think it might work out later even if it’s not exactly what I wanted now.

I’m so excited to see these progress posts. I’m very intrigued by your WIP, even though I’m not a huge fan of fantasy. I’m hoping that you plan to publish it, because I would love to read it (even beta read it). Here’s to continued progress and future success!

Laura, I would so have you beta read it at some point. Even if now I look at this draft and see it as a flaming pile of poo, but it is my flaming pile of poo and I’m going to shine it till it turns golden and at that point I should be unafraid to show it off!

This is so wonderfully relatable. I’m working on a WIP after a really long stretch of overwhelm and mental health struggle. It feels good to get pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and see your progress after what feels like a never ending string of things that prevent you from doing what you love. Best of luck on your WIP! I’ll look forward to seeing your progress.

Gosh I’m so happy to hear that you too are working on your project after a long streak of mental health struggle. Right now I’m still struggling, but for once it’s a struggle that I control and that doesn’t control me. Writing has always been my way of letting out all my emotion and creating something beautiful from it. I hated that I didn’t let myself just write for so long. Especially when I always loved it.

Awesome! It’s so wonderful to hear when people are interested in eventually reading. It feels me with such happy feelings. I can’t wait to have it be good enough to finally share it with others (who knows maybe even publishing it!)

There’s no better feeling than loving the story that your telling. Your story idea sounds really intriguing and I would be very excited to read one of your published works some day! Keep on writing and good luck 😀

AHHHHH!!! THIS!!! I don’t think I’d care that my hand was cramping. Touching so many lives with something I had written would fill me with such joy! Especially if any of them told me my story helped them in some way. That’s all I want.

I enjoyed reading this post. It seems many of us have been struggling with dark days recently. I found Rachael Stephen’s video on self care for writers very helpful. If you haven’t seen it here’s a link: https://youtu.be/bGqeCU4Ua1Y